Open your mind and Blu-ray/DVD player to ‘Wonders of the Universe’

Wonders of the Universe is straight-up science at its best: accessible, enlightening and so gosh darn beautiful. And if you haven’t seen this gorgeous four-part miniseries on Science Channel, now’s your chance to add it to your own galaxy of videos when it hits Blu-ray and DVD August 30.

Wonders is this generation’s hip, high-def Cosmos. You get an eye-opening, CGI-assisted look at the universe and our place in it, with insight that’s both a sight to behold and easy to grasp thanks to engaging host Professor Brian Cox, a physicist with Carl Sagan’s intellectual curiosity dressed in a rocker’s black T-shirt. Seriously, Cox started off as a musician who went on to play in the group D:Ream while earning a physics degree and later a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics.

Professor Brian Cox.

Good thing Cox traded keyboards for protons. Whether it’s tracing the birth of humanity with carbon from a dead star or the arrow of time with a collapsing glacier, Cox brings our 13.7 billion-year-old universe down to earth by explaining its myriad complexities with familiar related phenomena on our own planet. What we end up with is an illuminating lesson in the cosmos that globe-trots stark Namibian deserts, lush Zambian water falls and more applicable natural wonders, coupled with some stunning HD and special effects to really drive home what’s out there.

What’s out there is as startlingly complex as it is breathtaking. And thanks to Wonders of the Universe, it’s also startlingly easy on the eyes and on the brain.